The principal ambition of the Arqus Alliance is the design, testing and implementation of an innovative model for deep inter-university cooperation, which will serve as the basis for a truly European campus fulfilling all the missions of a university for the twenty-first century.
The policies and activities of the Alliance are designed to provide quality provision and attention to the entire community of diverse persons participating in our higher education institutions, and to ensure their full participation in and ownership of this initiative.
The strategy will address the three major groups composing the university community: students, potential students and alumni; academics; professional and technical staff.
The Alliance will continue jointly to promote widening access for diverse student and staff populations, facilitating inclusive admission and recruitment policies, and actively attracting talent from less represented groups. The Alliance has developed shared policies for inclusion and diversity for all members of the university community, formulated in the Arqus Charter for the Sustainable Development Goals, and is especially committed to ensuring universal accessibility of its resources and activities.
Arqus believes that by joining forces the already substantial individual strengths of partners are multiplied, facilitating our pursuit of all-round and inclusive excellence.
Arqus is committed to driving sustainable change and empowering its communities to contribute positively through its research, education and institutions.
The 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals summarize the 17 major urgent societal challenges faced by our planet, and which Arqus recognizes as interconnected priorities for its joint activities, identifying itself as a “Partnership for the Goals” in line with SDF 17.
To this end, the Alliance has identified three major interdisciplinary challenges as priority areas for joint actions in the future, through our Arqus Living Lab, which will build on activities carried out in the first three years and on the Arqus Joint Charter for Equality, Inclusion and Sustainability:
| Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability |
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| aimed at achieving SDG 13 Climate Action, together with SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production; SDG 14 Life Below Water, and SDG 15 Life on Land. |
| Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence |
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| as an instrument for the achievement of SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, SDG 4 Quality Education, SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. |
| European Indentity and Heritage |
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| embodied in European values as in SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, SDG 5 Gender Equality and SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities, and working through our global outreach towards SDG 1 No poverty and SDG 2 Zero Hunger. |
The Alliance centres its primary interest on people, as the essential component, resource and beneficiary of the knowledge society, the raison d’être of education in general, and higher education in particular.
Following this principle, Arqus is co-created and co-developed through the active contribution of students, academics and professional staff from all its member institutions. Arqus pays special attention to student participation and engagement, involving students as full members of its governing structures. Moreover, it aspires to continue and increase the involvement of members of the university communities as it grows and develops toward a true European University.
A powerful driver for our deep integration is the mutual trust built in domain-based communities of students, academics and professionals across our institutions. Arqus aims to institutionalize these through the Arqus Living Lab, a generator of multi-sectoral challenge-based proposals, the Arqus Communities of Practice, and the Student Agora.
Arqus is composed of leading European research universities, each widely recognized for its deep commitment to excellence. As such, the Alliance is committed to attaining excellence in all of its activities:
Arqus believes that by joining forces the already substantial individual strengths of partners are multiplied, facilitating our pursuit of all-round and inclusive excellence.
Furthermore, Arqus members are also committed to reducing the environmental impact of their operations, sharing best practices and finding shared solutions to develop their campuses as exemplars of environmental sustainability.
Arqus aims to stimulate open interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to both study programmes and research to ensure the acquisition of the high-level, transferable competences required by the rapid evolution of technology, the economy and the labour market.
Arqus believes this to be vital in order to ensure that complex societal challenges are addressed from the innovative and creative perspectives necessary for the pursuit of effective responses.
Furthermore, the Alliance will attempt to break down the barriers which currently persist between education and research within higher education.
To this end, it will promote challenge-based approaches to teaching & learning, and ensure that research activities constitute an integral part of study programmes, allowing students to participate in ongoing research.
The major challenges facing Europe are for the most part shared with the rest of the world, and require global approaches to find global solutions for our interconnected and interdependent world.
The Alliance aims to set up joint global initiatives in education and research, building on the complementarity of members’ strong strategic partners worldwide.
It further aims, through its Inclusive Excellence Fund and global mobility initiatives to build on that complementarity to promote Europe and Arqus as an attractive space for talent from around the world to study, research or work.
The Alliance is committed to guaranteeing truly multilingual environments as an essential feature of our European identity and immaterial heritage.
Arqus aims at making best use of the language diversity of our partners, who learn, teach and work in seven different languages and share the use of English as a lingua franca, in order to promote plurilingualism throughout Alliance and university activities, for the entire community and beyond.
The Alliance is further committed to moving beyond language competence in order also to promote intercultural competence amongst students and staff, as a core competence for an interdependent, globalized world.
Arqus promotes strong research collaboration within the Alliance and with European and global partners, in particular applied to the three major interdisciplinary priorities identified:
To this end, the Alliance brings together best practice in research management and support, and has established the EuREP platform to facilitate the sharing of research resources, equipment and data. It also implements joint doctoral and post-doctoral initiatives as the basis for early-stage researcher development and to promote shared opportunities.
Arqus believes that universities are unique institutions in that they bring together teaching and learning and research as their two major missions, alongside transfer, culture and service to society. As such, the Alliance aims to exploit the full potential of synergies between teaching and learning and research, developing challenge-based multi-actor learning spaces.
The Arqus Alliance aims to stimulate an entrepreneurial spirit and creativity amongst the entire university community and across different areas of activities, through mutual learning, and combining the complementary strengths of all its members.
The Arqus Alliance aims to address societal challenges of local ecosystems and seeks social and civic engagement. As leading institutional players deeply engaged in our local ecosystems, we will further devote our efforts to foster social, cultural and economic development, through transformational and sustainable partnerships.
The technological revolution has brought more rapid change than at any other time in human history, radically changing the way we live, work and learn.
The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a crash course in the use of technology for professional and personal activities, in the light of imposed restrictions on mobility and face-to-face meetings and activities. Consequently, Arqus has intensified its commitment to the digitalization of joint teaching and learning, of joint research, and of internal and external communication, awareness-raising learning activities, the enhancement of digital skills in general, alongside cutting- edge interdisciplinary research in the field through our Arqus Living Lab, involving social and ethical concerns and approaches.
Thus, Arqus is especially committed to the use of efficient Open Solutions, including Open Source software and Open Educational Resources, which facilitate collaborative work and are easily accessible, in order to leave no-one behind.
